The Federal Trade Commission filed a federal court complaint against AT&T. The FTC says that AT&T mislead millions of its customers by charging users for "unlimited" data while reducing their data speeds.
The major complaint the the FTC has is that AT&T did not adequately disclose to its customers that their unlimited plans would be throttled if they used more than a certain amount of data in a given billion cycle. This throttling effects things like web browsing, GPS navigation, streaming videos, and often times making these services difficult or even impossible to use!
"The FTC alleges that AT&T, despite its unequivocal promises of unlimited data, began throttling data speeds in 2011 for its unlimited data plan customers after they used as little as 2 gigabytes of data in a billing period. According to the complaint, the throttling program has been severe, often resulting in speed reductions of 80 to 90 percent for affected users. Thus far, according to the FTC, AT&T has throttled at least 3.5 million unique customers a total of more than 25 million times."
I feel like I have known for a long time, or at least should have known. I have AT&T, I have an unlimited plan. I have noticed that when not connect to WiFi, my phone takes an enormous amount of time to load pages. This should not be the case!
I am so happy the FTC finally has put a stop to this. This will set a precedent for other larger service providers.